Marvin was absolutely done with summer. The sun shone down on me with such ferocity that if i didn’t know any better, I’d have thought it had some sort of grudge with me. But that was just me being self-centered, I'm sure it hated all of us equally.

As my feet carried me over a low hill I could see my destination come into view. The Dungeon city, Ell. It had been a difficult journey to get here. Conventionally, the trip from my home village to Ell would take a caravan about half a year. Since I left my home in somewhat of a hurry, I didn’t prepare properly, went the wrong way, got lost, was captured by bandits, was rescued from said bandits by adventurers and sent in the right direction, got lost again and so on and so forth. What was supposed to be a half-year journey took about two years. I will never again attempt to travel anywhere without a map, that is a vow I made to myself just now.

I adjusted my hood a bit in an attempt to shield my eyes from the hateful sun and gripping my walking stick, Joined the procession of farmers and travelers heading toward the city. Looking around, most of the people were raph, with fur covered ears and horns growing out of their heads. Though there were quite a few elves mixed in here and there too. 

As I got to the east gates after an excessively long wait in a line, a bored looking raph guardsman gave me a line that sounded like he had repeated it thousands of times, losing bits of motivation and will to live with every repetition. “Please put your hand on the identification stone.” He said while holding out a smooth almost reflective spherical stone towards me. 

Having done this many times before, I smoothly placed my hand on the stone. The raph moved his eyes as if scanning something floating before him and quirked an eyebrow. “A human? Don't see many of your kind around here, mind dropping that hood a bit.”. He was probably just curious, after all, apart from the eastern coast humans were very rare on the Western continent.

I dropped my hood revealing my brilliance to the world. There wasn't much of a reaction, after all, apart from round fleshy ears and a lack of horns, I looked like any of the surrounding villagers. Messy brown hair cut short, freckled skin tanned by the sun and a large build clearly used to manual labor. My brilliantly normal appearance was crowned by a pair of exceptionally unexceptional brown eyes. If you asked an artist to draw a rendition of a young village farmer, then whatever he drew wouldn’t look dissimilar to me, and i was perfectly fine with that. It's not like I was ugly or anything.

Not seeing anything of interest to him, The guard grew bored again and continued his duties. “Alright, then your reason for visiting? The Dungeon?” I just nodded, wondering why he asked if he already knew. “The entrance fee is 5 copper, with it you can stay in the city for a week, but since you're going to the Dungeon you'll be wanting a temporary residency pass.” He continued his spiel then looked at me.

He started to look at me strangely for some reason. His helmet was interesting, having two round cut outs for his horns, which were black and ridged, kind of like a sheeps, but still too short to have a curl. Raph were interesting to compare to each other, they mostly looked like humans and had the same differences from each other that you would expect from a human, but their distinctly raph features had a lot of differences between them as well. Horns could be ridged or smooth, straight or curving and ranged in color from shades of black and white to browns.

A raphs ears were also often interesting to look at. The fur was the same color as the person's hair, and could take many shapes ranging from straight to drooping. The Guardsman was unfortunately wearing a helmet, so I couldn't see the shape of his ears. Speaking of which, the guardsman was looking at me with a confused expression. I wonder why. 

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……….

Ah. he wanted me to answer. I could no longer remember what he said since I wasn't paying attention. It would be awkward to have him repeat himself, so I just nodded my head and said “yes.”

The guard looked at me like i was a particularly stupid village idiot, but continued his spiel anyway. “ that would be one silver and five copper.” He stretched out his hand, as if expecting me to pay most of my remaining money just to enter the city. But the Dungeon was inside the city so I'd have to pay anyway if I wanted to make any progress. 

I dug into my money pouch, my excavations finding a couple pretty rocks and some smooth river stones. Hmmm, this might be my rock pouch. I searched my pockets, and found I had placed my money pouch where my rock pouch should have been. Plunging my hand into my distressingly empty money pouch I pull out the correct amount and hand it over to the mightily unimpressed looking guardsman.

He sighs while tucking my fee into a satchel at his side. From the same satchel he pulls a document, on which he expertly scribbles something. After he's done he hands it to me." This is your temporary residency pass. It will remain valid for a month. Remember to renew it before it expires and don't lose it." After that he seems to be done with me and turns to the next person in line. 

Ah, no wonder the fee was costly, passes like this usually cost a silver. I accepted the paper and glanced over it, making sure that I had in fact not suddenly learned to read. The squiggles remained incomprehensible to me, but I had a feeling I knew some of the things written there. "Status." I whispered under my breath.

Name: Marvin

Age: 17

Class: Tier 1; Hedge mage LV1

Skills:

Knack for magic

Cantrips

There it was, my status page. I didn't know how to read, but my status page made itself understood anyways. When it unlocked for me when I turned 15 I was so excited. Like other boys my age, I had dreams of becoming a hero, or a knight, or atleast a warrior. Other children had heckled that I’d unlock as a village idiot. What i’d gotten instead was hedge mage. But that sounds great, it says mage there so it must be good. You'd think that, and you'd be wrong. Contrary to the name the class is not a mage with magical control over hedges, though that also sounds stupid. It's the colloquial name for an untrained village mage. Where true mages throw fireballs to immolate their enemies to death, a hedge mage can maybe find a lost sheep, if the stars are right, or levitate a sock or some other barely useful nonsense that anyone else can do without the magical faffing about.

The worst part is that mages and wizards don't even accept hedge mages as apprentices, since their magical powers are often very weak. Thus a hedge mages fate is to either do another profession without any skills and no hope for advancement, or entertain children with tricks and help villagers with odd-jobs. 

If Marvin had unlocked as a villager he could have at least worked toward a class like militiaman or hunter, but no, he was stuck with this now. The biggest slap in the face was his childhood friend, who had unlocked as a page a few days before him. While I was happy for her, she didn't even want the class. She'd always said she wanted to be a bride.

Anyways, now Marvins only hope for getting a usable class was to advance to the second tier and hope his class evolved into something usable. And what better place to reach a higher tier than the Great Dungeon of Ell. Well, he could also commit enough crimes for his class to change into a criminal class like bandit or thief, but that would also make him a social pariah so it wasn't worth it.

Now, back to my status. I started with two skills, knack for magic gives me a vague sense of magical things. Cantrips helps me cast and memorize cantrips, which are like spells, but worse. My favorite spell in the useless cantrip category is the north finding cantrip, which allows me to feel which direction north is, but only if I'm holding a compass.

I suddenly realized I had been standing within the gatehouse for a while, staring blankly at my status page, and I was beginning to gather an increasing amount of worried and disdainful glances. This is hardly the first time this had happened, so Marvin did what he always did in these sorts of situations. He ignored everything and marched into the city, completely ignoring the fact that he had just been standing around gormlessly staring into space.